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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Kathy Ide: How to Uphold Your Reputation as an Author

The buzz
word in publishing is platform. But
did you know that having mistakes in your manuscript can affect your reputation
and platform?

Mechanical errors can give an
unprofessional appearance to publishers and readers.

Even if your manuscript has already
been accepted by a traditional publishing house, if their in-house editor has
to spend all her time fixing your mistakes, she won’t be able to catch the
deeper, more subtle nuances of your text. Besides, you won’t be presenting a
very polished, professional image to your publisher.

Mechanical errors can be
embarrassing.

A friend of mine once picked up a
book at a bookstore and noticed a typo on the back cover. When she reported it
to our critique group, she didn’t say she’d found a mistake on a book published
by “XYZ Publishers.” She said she found

the mistake on a “Jane Doe” novel. She
didn’t connect the error to the publishing house but to the author.

Mechanical errors may cause readers
to take you and your message less seriously.

I once saw a published article with
this title: “Crowe Turns Hero to Help Snake Bite Boy.” The story was about
actor Russell Crowe helping a boy who’d been bitten by a snake. But by spelling
snakebite as two words, this sentence implies that Mr. Crowe
helped a snake bite a boy! Now, I got a good laugh out of that. But I sure
don’t want those kinds of mistakes showing up in my own writing.

Mechanical errors can affect the
sales of your book.

Readers who find a lot of mistakes
in your book will not be as likely to recommend that book to their friends. And
who knows? You may have a high school English teacher reading your book, and
she just might recommend it to her students . . . unless there are a lot of
mistakes in it.

Mechanical errors can give you a
poor reputation.

If you self-publish, or work with a
small, independent publisher that doesn’t proofread carefully, your book may go
out to the public with several typos, inconsistencies, or PUGS (punctuation,
usage, or grammar) errors. Readers who catch those mistakes may consider you an
amateur.

For a lot of avid readers, typos
practically jump off the page. And many are familiar with the rules of
punctuation, usage, grammar, and spelling. If your reader knows the rules and
you don’t, that’s not going to make you look very good.

If you have a hard time finding
typos, inconsistencies, and “PUGS” errors in your writing, consider hiring a
professional proofreader. A careful proofread might make a life-or-death
difference for your manuscript.

Learn how best-selling authors proofread their manuscripts to avoid typos, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and errors in punctuation, usage, grammar, and spelling.

Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors, by professional freelance author, editor, and proofreader Kathy Ide, is the essential go-to tool for aspiring and experienced writers and editors. This book includes all of the material from Ide’s popular Polishing the PUGS book (now out of print), with added PUGS guidelines and helpful tips from multi-published authors on how to catch typos and other common mistakes.

In ProofreadingSecrets of Best-Selling Authors, Kathy Ide identifies the industry-standard references for books, magazines, and newspapers (which are different from the guidelines for other types of writing, such as college term papers). Using these official references, she highlights the most common mistakes writers make in the areas of punctuation, usage, grammar, and spelling (for which she uses the acronym PUGS). She also includes guidelines from The Christian Writer's Manual of Style for authors and editors who work in the inspirational market.

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